Ben Anderson: Alexander von Humboldt Lecture: Capitalism and Affective Change. Geohistory of Boredom

Alexander von Humboldt Lecture Series 2019-2020 on 'Integrative Affects of Urban Public Space'

Alexander von Humboldt Lecture: 'Capitalism and Affective Change: A Geohistory of Boredom'

Prof. Ben Anderson, Durham University, UK

Mon. 13.01.2020

Abstract: Public Spaces can contribute to affective change, but to understand affective change it is worthwhile to also look at other occasions and contexts, e.g.: What is boredom today? Does the boredom of regimented, linear time, of machine-led factory conditions and administrative procedures and timetables, still exist? Have new boredoms emerged alongside the other public moods which compose a troubled present frequently characterised under the sign of precarity and subject to the emergence of various populisms of the left and right? In this lecture, I offer a geohistory of boredom in the midst of laments and celebrations that in the wake of the collapse of distinctions between work and life, and as life is digitally mediated and, for some, felt in burnout and other affects of frenzy, boredom has disappeared. Through examples of the settling of boredom in relation to punk music, productivity apps, unemployment, Brexit, and the gig economy, amongst others, I stay with boredom to reflect on the challenges of theorising and researching affective change. How to connect changes in what is felt, by whom and how to the dynamics of capitalism and other always-already affective social-spatial formations?